The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano

“When you make men slaves you deprive them of half their virtue, you set them in your own conduct an example of fraud, rapine, and cruelty, and compel them to live with you in a state of war; and yet you complain that they are not honest or faithful! You stupify them with stripes, and think it necessary to keep them in a state of ignorance; and yet you assert that they are incapable of learning; that their minds are such a barren soil or moor, that culture would be lost on them;”

1. In this Passage Equiano speaks of being slave being in a “State of War” (Equiano 75). There were many negative stereotypes that slave masters attached to African slaves because they wanted to keep them in a state of inferiority. Equiano witnessed moral atrocities on a daily basis that exhibited a contradiction in how masters viewed the African slaves.  Colonial rulers, through brute force, promoted their economic and religious values; essentially stripping the African slaves of theirs. They wanted the African slaves to exemplify the virtuous qualities that they saw in themselves.  Equiano debunks this delusion and suggests that slave masters are doing nothing more than showing the character of white men through their conduct and example.
2. There is great irony in the way Europeans saw the African People; barbaric, uncivilized, and a people who couldn’t understand culture.  Colonisers kidnapped slaves from a country that had been rich in culture and tradition for thousands of years before their arrival.  Equiano is a subject in the Kingdom of Benen , by way of Eboe , which is now southwestern Nigeria. It is presumed that this pre-Columbian kingdom was and formed by the Edo people, flourished from the 13th to 19th century CE (Cartwright 2020). The kingdom is perhaps best known for its impressive brass sculptures and plaques which frequently depict rulers and their family; they are considered amongst the finest artworks ever produced in Africa.

Cartwright, Mark. “Kingdom of Benin.” Ancient History Encyclopedia. Ancient History Encyclopedia, 02 Apr 2019. Web. 18 Apr 2020.

The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano,

• “Indeed, such were the horrors of my views and fears at the moment, that, if ten thousand worlds had been my own, I would have freely parted with them all to have exchanged my condition with that of the meanest slave in my own country.”

1. In this passage  hyperbole is used contextually to emphasize, evoke. strong feelings and create strong impressions of Equiano’s psychological state during the first moments of his capture. When Equiano says, “if ten thousand worlds had been my own”(Equiano 25) he is speaking to the unique experience of a person who was not born into slavery but thrust into it. Although he details the many injustices, he witnessed throughout his enslavement he is also writing his narrative after the fact. He purchased his freedom in 1766 but still lived under the constant threat of being jailed, murdered or returned to slavery. His statement speaks to the despair, powerlessness and loss of control that he would give up the power to be free in exchange for being made a slave in his home country.
2. Equiano is bringing to light how vastly different slavery in Africa was compared to what he experienced.  In Equiano’s African kingdom a slave might be enslaved in order to pay off a debt or pay for a crime. Slaves in Africa lost the protection of their family and their place in society through enslavement. Children of slaves born into families could be integrated into the master’s kinship group and rise to prominent positions within society, even to the level of chief in some instances. The type of slavery during the Transatlantic slave trade is referred to as chattel slavery. “A chattel slave is a piece of property, and without rights” (Okoye 1980). This kind of slavery was very different because  it was dehumanizing and solely based on the genetic make-up of a person. Generations  of children, women and men were sold were non-human objects to be owned, used and disposed of at will, as was to be practiced by Europeans

Okoye, F. Nwabueze. “Chattel Slavery as the Nightmare of the American Revolutionaries.” The William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 37, no. 1, 1980, pp. 4–28. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1920967. Accessed 20 Apr. 2020.

ON BEING BROUGHT FROM AFRICA TO AMERICA

Phyllis Wheatley

• “Their colour is a diabolic die.”

Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain,

May be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train.”

1. The term was first used in an Atlantic Monthly article titled “Striving s of the Negro People” in 1897. The concept is often associated with William Edward Burghardt DuBois, who brought the terminology to light famously, in his groundbreaking book,  The Souls of Black Folk (1903). W. E. B. DuBois uses the concepts of ‘the veil’ and ‘double-consciousness’ to explain the “peculiar conditions” (Pittman 2016) within which African Americans find themselves in the United States and the specific tools at their disposal to understand and hopefully dismantle those conditions.  Phyllis Wheatly uses this second sight to provide her with a basis for deeper insights into the social realm and the possibility for more effective actions against the systems of domination in place.

Pittman, John P., “Double Consciousness”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2016/entries/double-consciousness/>.

2. When enslaved Africans first arrived in America, some brought religious traditions with them. But the pain of slavery drove many to look for meaning and hope in a new place – the Bible.  Although many could not read the stories of retribution and salvation took a hold of all slaves who heard them. Christianity was a practice the African slaves saw as a salvation but was also a tool slave holders used to oppress them. Although most slaves could not read, biblical stories of salvation and retribution spread like fire. Out of the more than three quarters of a million words in the Bible, Christian slaveholders had two favorites texts, one from the beginning of the Old Testament and the other from the end of the New Testament (Rae 2018).

Rae, Noel. The Great Stain: Witnessing American Slavery. The Overlook Press, 2018.